


Cutting Out the Middleman

by OneMoreAltmer



Category: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Genre: Anal Sex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 13:55:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14770875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneMoreAltmer/pseuds/OneMoreAltmer
Summary: In which it is quite possible to allow the two most popular male characters to meet without having a player character. Martin's rescue comes from an unexpected place.





	Cutting Out the Middleman

I was in the middle of healing a city guard’s broken arm when he first whispered in my ear.  “You are Brother Martin, then.”

He was standing close behind me, and I was busy, so I did not turn to look at him.  Instead, I answered over my shoulder.  “I am Martin, yes.”

A gloved hand grasped my shoulder.  “I need you to come with me.”

“Is it an emergency?  I am not quite finished here.”

“If he is not dying, then yes, this is more important.”

Gods, more people dying.  There seemed to be no end to it.  I turned, sighing, and allowed myself to be grabbed by the wrist and led out of the Chapel.  The carnage outside was dreadful even in twilight.  At least the horrid red glow of the Gates was gone.  Actually, we were moving directly toward where one of them had been – toward the city gate.

I pulled free of the strange man’s grasp and stopped walking.  “I can’t leave the city,” I told him.  “Not now.  You will have to bring the patient to me.”

He turned and glared at me with obvious frustration.  His angry hazel eyes were almost all I could see of him, in fact; he was dressed like a particularly modest mage, with a cowl as well as a robe. 

“We don’t have time for this,” he snarled.  “I don’t usually – ”  He stopped, pinched the bridge of his nose to collect his thoughts.  I stood and waited.  The sick or injured party was someone he knew well, I supposed, and he was distraught.  It was nothing new to me as a healer.

What he told me instead was not at all what I expected.

“I have to get you out of here before they try again.”

“Me!”

He stepped in close and looked up intently into my eyes.  His features were pale and fine.  Imperial?  Breton?  It was hard to tell.  “Yes, you.  This was all about you.  Are you really going to make me stand here and explain it to you when we are not secure?  When anyone passing by might be someone sent to kill you?”

I leaned back from him.  Either he was mad, or – no, not mad.  If anything, his eyes were dangerously lucid.  But surely he could not be _correct._

“Then you should have explained it to me in the Chapel.  We were quite safe there.”

He sneered.  “No, we weren’t.  But you’re not going with me until I do, I suppose.”  He glanced around us at the smouldering, abandoned buildings, and finally gestured toward the remains of a little house.  “There.  I can keep that secure for long enough.  Come with me.”  He reached for my wrist again; when I resisted him, he sighed.  “I did not go to the effort of closing that Gate just to murder you in a dark corner, Brother Martin.”

I raised my eyebrows.  “You are the Hero of Kvatch?”  He seemed capable enough, almost magnetic in his grace in fact, but he did not strike me as the heroic type.

He read the skepticism in my eyes, and smiled a little.  “You don’t think I’m a good man.  You’re correct.  So perhaps you _will_ believe me when I say that if I had wanted to kill you, I would have been more subtle.”

Yes, that I did believe.  I shivered a little – a cool evening breeze, I told myself.  I nodded and offered my arm for him to lead me.

It was cold in the hovel as well, and darker for the lack of moonlight – not a complete lack, since holes were burnt into the roof.  He left me inside the door once he had closed it and made a quick survey of the perimeter before he decided to relax enough to return and speak to me again.

“Spy?” I asked.  “Tracker?  Assassin?”

One corner of his mouth quirked upward.  “Something along those lines.  You’re less than completely naïve, then.”

I crossed my arms.  “I was not always a priest.”

A long, studious look, a glimmer of curiosity.  “And you are not always going to be a priest.  If you live long enough, you will be the Emperor.”

I didn’t say anything to that.  I could not think of anything to say.  I wished I had not already decided that he was not insane.

“Naturally you will be skeptical,” he went on.  “Jauffre told me you were never informed about your real heritage.  He is a Blade,” he explained, waving one hand casually at my surprise.  “He hid you, I assume against such a contingency as this.  But someone knows who you are, and sent the daedra after you.  You are no longer safe in Kvatch, and I have been sent to move you.”

It was true that I knew Jauffre.  That he’d watched over me as a child, with a degree of interest and of _funding_ that I had never really questioned.  He, I – the acceptance of what he’d said washed over me all at once, and along with it came an awful dread for what kind of enemy could have raised those impossible Gates against me.  Years out of practice in either spellwork or battle, and now suddenly I was a hunted thing, alone in the world except for –

The question came out barely more than a whisper.  “I don’t suppose you will tell me your name.”

“Will you follow me if I do?”  He moved close to me again, nearly touching.  “Lucien.”  His eyes drifted down over my face for a moment and then back up to mine.  “Lucien Lachance,” he said more quietly.  “I am part of the Dark Brotherhood.  If anyone knows how to protect you from assassins, I do.”

His lips were full, and brought to mind the sorts of things I had once known how to do.  “Very well, then, Lucien.  Take me.”

I should have said that slightly differently.  Before I could correct myself, he once more took hold of my wrist and led me back out of the building.  Night had fallen; he walked away from the sad handful of lights in the ruined city and toward the city gate.  I almost walked into his horse in the darkness, a magnificent black mare.  He mounted first, and then reached a hand down toward me.

“Would we not be faster on two horses?” I asked.

He shook his head.  “No horse can keep pace with Shadowmere, even with two riders.  Come up.”

I let him help me up behind him.  Then, with some awkwardness, I put my hands on his hips, as there was really nowhere else to put them.  He grabbed them and wrapped my arms around him more tightly.  He did not see the ghost of a smile that came to my face as he kicked Shadowmere into flight.

All nerves, certainly.  I’d sworn myself free of these sorts of feelings when I’d taken my vows as a priest.  I’d managed to avoid thinking about the folly of swearing oneself “free of feelings” for three years.  No one in Kvatch had tempted me.

But Lucien did.  I could feel how lean and muscular he was even through the thick fabric of his robes.  He smelled of trees that did not grow as far west as Kvatch.  I kept thinking about his mouth, the intensity of his eyes.

At least until I started thinking about how exhausted I was.  Then I realized that I could not remember my last full night of sleep.  The attack, the siege, the healings – I felt Lucien grab my arm with one hand.  I was getting so tired that I had weakened my hold around his waist.

Within a few minutes we stopped.  Some campsite in the hills:  there was little more I could tell in the dark.  He helped me down.

“No,” he said as if to himself, taking my face in his hands and scanning it thoughtfully.  “You would not make it much further tonight.  Go and sit down.  I’ll build you a fire.”

“You don’t have to take _care_ of me,” I protested, even though I could hear the weariness in my own voice and feel how weakly I pushed his hands away.  “I know how to build a fire.”

“How wonderful for you.  So do I.  Sit down.”  He stood and watched me until I relented and took a seat by the fire pit.  I blinked, and when my eyes opened the fire was lit, and Lucien was watching me and looking vaguely amused.

“Luckily you didn’t manage to fall into the fire,” he said.  “Do you need to be helped into the tent?”

“No.  I’m feeling a little better.”  I cast my gaze down at the flames.  “I would rather not go to sleep just yet.”

He sat down to my right, took up a stick and poked at the kindling with it.  “You know,” he said after a few moments of silence, “you are awfully _pretty_ to be a priest of the Nine.  If I hadn’t found you in the Chapel, I would have guessed you a Sanguinite.”

He must have seen my alarm before I slammed it back down in my chest.    He was staring.  I said nothing.  I sat very still and kept my eyes down, as if that was going to persuade him to change the subject.

I could _feel_ the smile although I refused to turn and see it.  “You _were_ a Sanguinite, then.  And now a priest of Akatosh?  That’s fascinating.  I wonder what ruined you.”

“I would not say that becoming a priest of Akatosh was quite the same thing as being _ruined,_ ” I retorted, my voice a little more strained than I would have liked.  “And if it is, you can’t be very pleased to have ridden to my rescue.  What ruined _you?”_

He didn’t answer at first, but when I glanced up at him, he shrugged and started to talk.  “I was in the Imperial Prison when your father tried to escape.  It was quite a stroke of bad luck for me.  I had a contract, and I’d gone to a great deal of trouble to find a way into the prison, and no sooner had I come through it than the Emperor himself came along wanting to take the same way _out._ ”  He paused.  “You look like him, you know.”

“I don’t know.”

“So I had to play along.  I had to be a prisoner and follow them out for the free pardon.  And then they had to start going on about _assassins._ ”  His face went bitter.  “I wish that people would not misuse the word.  Untrained zealots in bright red robes.  Ridiculous.  And yet they got past the Blades anyway.  Just before your father died, he sent me to Jauffre so that Jauffre could send me to you.”

“And then there were the Gates.”

He laughed.  “Well, only one, by the time I got there.  At least it was interesting.”

“Why?”

“I told you.  Because someone wants you dead.”

“No, I mean – ” I looked at him, at how fine and appealing his features were by this light.  “Why did you go to all the trouble?”

Our eyes locked, and he sighed.  “At first, professional pride.  The Brotherhood cannot allow some absurd little cult to start fancying themselves to be assassins because of dumb luck.  Their next target cannot be trusted to the ineptitude of the Blades.”

“We are not going to Jauffre, then?”

“No,” he sneered, “we are certainly not going to Jauffre.  The Blades did not keep Uriel alive, and they did not keep you a secret.  I am not inclined to give them a third chance.  I know better places to keep you.”

I thought he was leaning closer to me.  Perhaps it was my imagination.  All the same, I leaned in myself.

“I see,” I breathed.  No, perhaps I wasn’t imagining it.  Perhaps he was looking at my lips with the same sentiment that made me keep looking at his.

“You said _at first,_ ” I pointed out.

“Did I?” he murmured, and very clearly leaned further toward me.  I caught my breath, and he smiled.  He moved close, his breath warm on my neck.  “Maybe I’ve said too much,” he whispered, with his mouth tantalizingly close to my skin.  “After all, you haven’t told me anything.”

I gasped and took hold of his hands, leaning my head back slightly in invitation.  “You already know.  I was a Sanguinite.”

“Ah.  I thought so.”  His lips finally brushed against mine, soft and wonderful.  I latched onto them eagerly; the illusion I’d spent three years trying to build was already in tatters anyway, and it was a delicious relief to let the last of it go, to let there be one aspect of that ruin that brought me pleasure.

He sighed loudly, licked my bottom lip to coax my mouth open.  I moved into a kneeling position and encouraged him with my hands to do the same, so that we could press closer together.  In that he followed my lead, and I could feel him breathing harder as we kissed, and his cock stiffening against mine.  My confidence in my old skills was coming back quickly, and I reached up to stroke his face, then snaked my hands back under the cowl, brushing them through his hair as I eased the fabric back to reveal him.

He startled at that, but I held him in place gently, smiling.  “What’s the harm if I see you?”  I kissed him again as he considered the question.  He answered by growling and knocking me onto the ground on my back and pinning me down by the shoulders, kissing me harder.

What dreadful punishment.  I bit at his lips and unfastened his robe and then his shirt.  He tore at mine with a passion that was almost anger, and we were skin to skin.  I started to trace over his body with my fingertips as we kissed, finding grooves in his flesh on his chest, his belly, his shoulders.  Old wounds.

He grabbed my hands and pinned them above my head.  “Stop that,” he whispered, and then began to bite at my throat.

“I like them,” I grinned, but I did not struggle to free myself.  I knew very well that the one in power was not always the one in charge.

He ground against me as he held me down.  When that was no longer enough for him, he released his hold in order to take off my pants and then unfasten his, kneeling in a straddle above me to keep me from leaving, as if I wanted to.  He passed his hands slowly over my chest, and I ran mine up his wiry arms.  The undercurrent of violence in his eyes hadn’t gone, but it was muted, overpowered by passions more familiar to me.

He finally answered the question I had all but given up on.  “Now it’s because I want to keep you,” he whispered.

“Keep me!”  I chuckled, deliberately breathy, arching my chest toward him.  “You haven’t even taken me yet.”

He responded perfectly, grabbing up my legs and driving into me.  I bit my lip and groaned in satisfaction.  He realized I had provoked him on purpose, and smirked at me, but did not withdraw.  Instead he took hold of my cock and stroked it slowly, in time with his thrusts.  It felt wonderful, and I started panting with him, making him smile.

“You’re worse than Vicente,” he said.

“I’m not your only man?” I whined, placing my hands on his shoulders.  “I’m heartbroken.  Is he pretty?”

“Yes.”

“Can I have him too?”

He sped up.  “We’ll see.”

If he had never been a Sanguinite himself, it was not for lack of talent.  He went on fucking me and stroking me simultaneously, even once he was gone deep into sensation himself, eyes closed and glistening with sweat.  I was sweating myself, despite how cold the night had gotten around us and how low the untended fire.  All my body was ablaze, and it was only by an act of will that I held myself back from coming before him.

Even as he gasped and shook in orgasm he did not lose his grip on me, and almost immediately he fell forward, pumping me faster as he covered my lips with his to make me quiet.  I was happy to give him that:  I let the pleasure explode through me and whined into his mouth, letting him smother my noise and feel my tremors.

And promptly, without even breaking the kiss, he pulled away for a moment and pulled my robe shut again between us, leaving most of the moisture on my side.  That was a part he didn’t care for, then.  I resolved to keep it in mind for next time.  He pressed close to me again, still kissing me, and ran his fingers through my hair.

“What do we do now?” I asked when he gave me a chance to catch my breath.

“I suppose we crawl into the tent and sleep.  In the morning, I deposit you somewhere safe.  Then I find out who wants you dead and kill them.”

“That’s very efficient.”  I licked his ear by way of approval.

He smiled and shook his head at me.  “Are you sure you ever _were_ a priest?”

“No.  I’m not.”


End file.
